Military Recognizes Marriage Equality

It has always been the policy of the American military to discriminate against the LGBT community. Even after the scrapping of the odious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, they continued to deny equal rights and protections to same-sex couples. Their justification for this was the equally odious Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed by Congress -- which prevented any entity of the federal government from giving same-sex marriages the same rights given to opposite-sex marriages.

Well, those days are over. The Supreme Court recently declared DOMA to be unconstitutional, removing the only legal justification the military had for discrimination against same-sex marriages. And yesterday, the Department of Defense announced that same-sex marriages will now be treated the same as any other marriage starting on September 3rd of this year. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel made it official by issuing a memo saying:

It is now the department's policy to treat all married military personnel equally. The department will construe the words 'spouse' and 'marriage' to include same-sex spouses and marriages, and the Department will work to make the same benefits available to all military spouses, regardless of whether they're in a same-sex or opposite-sex marriage.

This does not end the battle for equal rights for the LGBT community in this country, but it is another small step toward the equality guaranteed all citizens in the Constitution.